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Combat
Combat refers to an active engagement between a player and a hostile mob, in PvE (Player vs Enemy or Player vs Environment), or between players in PvP (Player vs Player). Combat in The Secret World is complex and combat Abilities are divided up into four Roles to facilitate its description and the construction of adaptable or streamlined player Decks with complementary Abilities. Typically, during combat the player and the opposing hostile force are damaging each other's health pool with Weapons, but other aspects such as healing and crowd control also play into combat mechanics. When engaging in combat, the player character is usually flagged in the game system which can restrict certain game mechanics (i.e. activating sprint or accepting an item quest) from being used. Combat generally ends when either the monster, or monsters, the player has engaged is dead and all debuffs time out, or when the player/players themselves have died. Players can also run from combat and monsters generally will give up the pursuit after a time. In combat, targets can be put into states that make them more vulnerable to certain skills. These targets can be either hostile or friendly. An example of a state is one player using a skill to put an enemy on fire, and another player using a skill that does extra damage to targets on fire. Targeting Abilities act on enemies by choosing a single target and/or affecting enemies within an area # Single Target. # Single Target Area Effect AE or Area of Effect AoE (also TAE), usually a circle surrounding the target; affects other targets inside the circle, or area, as well # Ground Targeted AE (GTAE): A circle targeting a point on the ground affecting targets within the radius # Point Blank Area Effect (PBAE): Affects targets within a circle centred on the user # Frenzy attack areas are usually a fan spreading out in front of the user, but Hammer frenzies are often a large pipe shape (column) extending out from the user = Roles = Damage (DPS). Support. Healing. Survivability (Tank). These Augments were added in Issue 8, but they reflect a consideration given to the skills and decks since the development stage, and as the names in brackets indicate, have also been part of other games, in other forms. = Support = The least defined of the Roles, often amounting to a wastebasket of hard to categorize or even ill-understood abilities, there are a few status effects that are unequivocally both group friendly but more importantly, also unique and powerful effects that aid combat. Part of the lack of definition is an even spread throughout the Weapons; there are no outstanding examples for the category as a whole. Purge Elementalism is the primary and Shotgun the secondary source of the Purge effect in The Secret World. It removes beneficial effects from enemies. Purge Category Cleanse Cleanse: Removing detrimental effects from self or allies. Hate Hate: The Miscellaneous Green outer ring skills, Hammer, and Blade all have the ability to manipulate the chance that enemies will attack a particular player in preference to others. Blade and Hammer = Damage = Damage is best defined, at least in the large number of abilities, by Shotgun, with its mass of Penetration boosts. Damage formulas needed Corrupt The Pistol ability debuff of "Corrupted" reduces the value of heal, Absorb, and Leech effects. Transylvanian monsters are notorious for being hard to kill due to those defenses and Pistol debuffs are useful if not required. Criticals Critical Chance is the Chance to land a Critical hit. There is little documentation on how much increased damage Critical hits actually do, but in other games, it is common to see doubled damage or more. The amount of damage is multiplied by the Critical Chaos Exploiters of the Weakened state all affect Criticals; Chaos Magic abilities that give enemies the Weakened State reduce defence. Damage increase Damage increase: Multipliers to damage, at the source, rather than with player abilities or stats or enemy defense reduction. Defence reduction Certain exploits and the Expose effect of the Chaos Magic abilities that give enemies the Weakened State. Chaos Exploiters of the Weakened state all affect Criticals. Exploit See Exploitation State and Category:Exploiters Certain abilities work in concert with states or other status effects to perform secondary effects. Additional damage is the most common secondary effect of Exploitation; others include costing less Weapon Focus, generating new or additional Weapon Focus, adding additional states to the enemy, or even purging beneficial states (buffs) from them. Expose :See State#Expose A small number of Weaken effects give the enemy the Exposed defense reduction status. Hit Chance The opposite of Glance is doing additional damage by not glancing, with buffs like "Minor Hit Chance". Penetration Penetration: A chance to bypass the enemy's Protection rating altogether. Blood Magic and Shotgun. Penetration Rating is compared with Block Rating; a high enough ratio yields a Penetrating Blow. Monsters can't go out and grind for more defence; a potential advantage for players. = Survivability = Best described by Hammer's mass of Mitigation and Defence increase (and to a lesser extent Blade), and Chaos Magic's Evades. Mitigation Mitigation: Damage reduction, by reducing the damage itself, rather than by reducing enemy effectiveness (Weaken) or by wearing armor, or with player abilities or stats. The most reliable defence. Defence increase The Protection effect reduces damage by increasing the defence stats of Physical Protection and Magical Protection directly. Clotting, Mitigating Factor, Hardcase, Shield Formation Glance Glancing blows do 60% damage, and some Defence abilities can make the opponent more likely to Glance. The chance for attacks to Glance is increased by increasing Defence. Block Block: Block Rating is compared with Penetration Rating to determine chance to block; blocked attacks do 30% less damage and are prevented from being Penetrating Blows. The rationale for Shotgun having good penetration is quite good: how might one block a myriad of small pellets at near-sonic speeds? Hammer has many abilities that block attacks and even Exploits blocked attacks. High Block is the only way to avoid the uniformly high Penetration Rating of high end monsters and bosses. Evade Evade: Avoiding an attack altogether; like Criticals, such an advantageous outcome has to have a low chance of success or it is too powerful. Chaos Magic, mostly. Hinder Hinder, the common State applied by Abilities. Reducing the time enemies are in range to attack by limiting their movement speed (Snare), including down to zero (Root) Impair Most often referred to directly, on this wiki, as the State itself, for the purposes of determining Exploitation. Impair effects are varied and quite different from each other, at least in animation. Knockdown A term familiar from other games; in fact the most common and effective form of this is for enemies to be knocked into the air. Enemy damage is negated altogether during this time. Stun Stun is another of the most powerful forms of damage reduction, adding greatly to damage output as well, in PvP, where it stops the opponent healing or moving out of range or closing to melee range or much of anything really. Movement :Not only can the movement speed of enemies be reduced, but the speed of players increased, if only when they are attacking. Divided into pure movement speed buffs, Charge, which moves to a target, and Dash, which moves a set distance in the direction the user is facing, Movement skills include Full Momentum, Helter Skelter, Rapid Getaway, Running Circles, Shake and Bake, Touchdown and Trucker. Weaken Weaken, the common State applied by Abilities; roughly a third of Weaken abilities reduce enemy attack and damage effectiveness with the "Debilitated" effect of Hammer and Shotgun. Pistol and Chaos Weakens are offensive, increasing Damage by reducing defense, increasing Criticals or reducing the value of defensive abilities with Expose. = Healing = Heal ability. Fairly widely spread throughout the Weapons, as befits the grandparent of all non-damage abilities. Notable presence in Assault Rifle, Blood Magic, and Fist, though. Although Absorb's temporary hit points and Reflect can equally be seen as Defence, and Leech's lifetap is half damage, damage absorption, damage return and Leech are included here with healing. Absorb Blood Magic, mostly. Absorb. Succinctly, fire and forget healing; proactive rather than reactive. The most defensive type of heal, also, since healing can be done on top of the damage absorption. Heal over Time Heal over Time, or HoT. The opposite of Damage over Time, or DoT, HoTs heal in pulses, many in total, and tending to be more healing in total, but lower amounts each time than single heals. Blood Magic, Fist Leech Assault Rifle, mostly. Categorized separately to Heal abilities, Leech does damage and heals at the same time. Reflect Blood Magic's Exquisite Corpse ability, Chaos' Suffering and Solace, and Chainsaw's "Diamond Grit". Does not merely prevent damage, but also returns a percentage to the attacker. = Links = * Survivability on CryGaia: the best damage formulas anywhere. Its focus prevents it from being a complete treatment of all combat damage mechanics. Much of it is presented in the form of the code sequence for determining hits and damage. Movement Category:Combat Category:Classes Category:The Secret World